iPod woe.....

[The Admiral]

My beloved and very well cared for iPod Classic, has, after 6 faultless years, made some horrible noises this morning as the drive spins and whirrs, before giving me the 'contact Apple' message. Does anyone have any experience of this type of thing? I'm taking it into the local Apple store tomorrow, but I have a horrible feeling it could be expensive to the point of writing it off. All comforting comments welcome!!!!

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

Doesn't sound good. Have you tried factory reset/restore?

[flyfisher]

The only comforting thing I can think of is it should be possible to save a load of money by replacing the hard drive yourself (assuming that's the problem, but there are no other moving parts that will cause 'horrible noises' ).

Lots of info on the web about this, e.g. http://www.ifixit.com/Device/iPod_Classic

It might seem daunting, but what have you got to lose when the worst case is that you'll have to just buy a new iPod?

It'll be interesting to hear what the Apple Store says though.

[wateroftyne]

Yeah - me too. My trusty ipod is of similar vintage...

[JapanAxe]

Sadly I think the days of tiny high-capacity hard-drive music players (well, that'd be the iPod Classic) are numbered, as people move over to streaming music from that Cloud thingy. Pity, as I don't want my on-the-move listening to be dependent on a decent phone connection, and then be paying for bandwidth to listen to music I've already bought!

Edited December 6, 2013 by JapanAxe

[bumnote]

http://www.ipodrepairs.co.uk/

These guys are absolutely brilliant, repaired over the years 2 ipods and my daughters phone. Very quick and cheaper than a new one

[tonyquipment]

[quote name='JapanAxe' timestamp='1386359036' post='2299362']
Sadly I think the days of tiny high-capacity hard-drive music players (well, that'd be the iPod Classic) are numbered, as people move over to streaming music from that Cloud thingy. Pity, as I don't want my on-the-move listening to be dependent on a decent phone connection, and then be paying for bandwidth to listen to music I've already bought!
[/quote]

The battery wept as I read that our loud.

[ratman]

I suspect that 'contact Apple' really means 'this device is f***ed, please replace with an iPad immediately'.

[TimR]

I replaced the battery in my iPod photo. It's now 9 years old and gives a bit of gyp every now and again. I think it's due for another battery.

It's easy. Maplins do a tool kit, or get one cheaper off ebay. All you have to do is source a hard drive. A great thing about these iPods is you can use them as a portable hard drive. Taking away that facility was a bad move apple!

Edited December 7, 2013 by TimR

[The Admiral]

Thanks for all the input chaps, and I had a look at the fix it yourself site, but given that they rate each job in terms of difficulty, and a new hard drive was 'very difficult', I thought better of it. Especially with my fat fingers and lack of patience with all things fiddly.

I've decided to send it to the company suggested by Bumnote , and they'll actually upgrade with a new 120 mb drive, from 80mb for £79, which doesn't feel too outrageous. I'll update when I get it back.

Cheers

[TimR]

It's getting harder to find IDE 2.5" hard drives.

I read somewhere that the iPod won't format more than 160Gb so they may well be using drives much bigger anyway.

Sounds good though.

[dmccombe7]

Mines locked up Fri night while still hooked into car. Set off my car alarm due to drain on battery while connected. Well I think that's what caused it. Was the only thing that matched up to my alarm going off and my ipod locked up ???
Ipad reset and all back to normal again.

Dave

[lojo]

Subscribed

My IPod classic brought new in 2008 won't restore , ahhh

[The Admiral]

My favourite bit of the whole episode was talking to the American bloke on the Apple help line. I gave him the serial number so he could check the age of it etc, and his response was "Wow man, that's a seriously vintage bit of kit"! Mrs A bought it to replace a white MK 2 which was stolen at a gig - in November 2006. I have underpants older than that - which I guess are equally 'seriously vintage'.

[LeftyJ]

This is interesting, I'll be keeping a close eye on this topic
I've been using an 80 GB iPod Classic extensively, mostly in my car (hooked to a Parrot MK9200i carkit with an iPod connector, SD cardreader, USB in and mini-jack in) or in my company van (hooked to a iPod USB-to-mini-jack cable - I hate going from the headphone output to a line input) nowadays and I would hate it dying on me. They're still selling the current 160 GB version, but I would hate having to spend 250 euros on a new one.

[The Admiral]

Update for interested parties.

Mrs a posted it Special Delivery on Monday and I received an email at 0800 today saying it had been received and would be worked on ASAP.

Just got another email confirming that the work is done and it will be collected at 5pm today for return by Royal Mail Special Delivery.

Very good comms - let's see how it goes when it gets here!

[ead]

As an antidote to iPods, last year I took a deep breath and dived into the smartphone world. I went for an HTC One+ or some such name. Anyway the upside is 64GB solid state memory most of which is free to use. Better than most of them at the time, but that was a whole year ago so I'm guessing things have moved on...

[uncle psychosis]

[quote name='ead' timestamp='1386790621' post='2304667']
As an antidote to iPods, last year I took a deep breath and dived into the smartphone world. I went for an HTC One+ or some such name. Anyway the upside is 64GB solid state memory most of which is free to use. Better than most of them at the time, but that was a whole year ago so I'm guessing things have moved on...
[/quote]

That's still pretty huge in smartphone terms.

Personally I prefer having separate smartphone and mp3 player. My 30 GB mp3 is full now, so I have been looking at the ipod classics. They're really expensive when you compare them to just putting a huge memory card in a phone though :-(

[The Admiral]

Update : iPod arrived back in nuclear proof custom packaging this morning just as I was leaving for the train. Just had time to fire it up, and it did so fine - and has a test track in the memory.

I'll post later when I have had a chance to reload if from my iTunes folder.

[Myke]

My iPod died the other week. Was listening to Rollin' - Big n Rich and as soon as the song ended it wouldn't do anything.

It was a bit beat up though..

[ead]

[quote name='uncle psychosis' timestamp='1386842536' post='2305144']
Personally I prefer having separate smartphone and mp3 player. My 30 GB mp3 is full now, so I have been looking at the ipod classics. They're really expensive when you compare them to just putting a huge memory card in a phone though :-(
[/quote]

I also have an iPod Nano mk3 for the gym.

[uncle psychosis]

I've actually been doing some research today. I think my solution will be to buy a Sansa Clip+ and put a 64GB SDXC card in it. About £80 for a 64 GB flash based mp3 player.

[The Admiral]

So, now that I have had the chance to update the returned iPod, I can say that it works beautifully, the turnaround time was excellent - back out in a day, and the service very professional from start to finish : easy to use website, excellent updates sent regularly, and top quality packaging.

One minor niggle - that it had been formatted for Mac - but not an issue really.

Thoroughly impressed and an unreserved recommendation.

[bumnote]

Im glad it worked for you, I think their service is amazing